French rogue trader Jerome Kerviel, who cost Société Générale €4.9bn (£3.8bn), has got himself a new job as a computer consultant.
Kerviel was released on bail in mid-March and joined the consultancy in April. Kerviel originally worked in the bank's back office before becoming a trader.
His spokesman told AP: "Jerome is a young …

Like IT needs another cowboy consultant.

Jeeeeeezzz

so does this mean...

..that the directors of Northern Rock can become IT consultants to the UK Government? Maybe they have already, it would help to explain the shambles that Gordo and his pals have got us into. Mind you, as El Reg reported a while back, the abominable and incompetent Patricia Hewitt, former Blurrite Health Minister, loathed by health practitioners but loved by management consultants and outsourcers, got a nice phat 60K+ a year job as a non-exec director of BT, which shoorly wasn't a reward for all the highly profitable NHS spine work that she bunged BT's way for them to right royally frak up. Shoorly not.

So don't worry, senior directors and managers, if you b*lls up in the private sector, don't worry, just get on Gordo's public sector gravy train and you'll be just fine, Govt contracts a-plenty to over-promise and under-deliver and rake off a tidy sum from the muggins taxpayer, Joe Public.

(I've worked in the NHS and other public sector institutions and left to go into the private sector because I just couldn't cope with the incompetence, nepotism, graft, and corruption in the *streamlined and efficient* Noo Labour public sector.)

@Mark Broadhurst

Obviously you are jealous. Given how incompetent most IT people are, and his demonstrated abilities, he might be useful.

BTW: The term “cowboy”, in American English where the term comes from, is not a pejorative, it’s a complement. It means someone of strong character who does the right thing even when surrounded by weaklings who do the wrong thing because that’s the consensus or easy thing to do. That’s something dumbass Europeans can’t get through their tiny brains. But then, their tiny brains is why basically nothing of significance in IT ever came out of Europe. Microprocessors, RAM, hard drives, CRTs, LCD displays, Fortran, C & C++, BASIC, UNIX, DOS, Windows etc. – all American inventions. And what did not get invented in America (like Flash), was invented in Japan.

Who Cares ?

Who cares ?

What the stock holders and the French government should really do is sack the entire board of directors and the external auditors as they are truly crap and mostly asleep at the wheel at the best of times !

AC I call BS

Transistors: There is some evidence that the idea (and patents) for transistors was first put forward by Austrian-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld and in 1934 German physicist Dr. Oskar Heil patented another field-effect transistor. Legal papers from the Bell Labs patent show that Shockley and Pearson had built operational versions from Lilienfeld's patents, yet they never referenced this work in any of their later research papers or historical articles. Integrated circuits (CPU's?) are only many transistors on one chip.

RAM: first made at Birmingham University using CRT's. Birmingham is in the UK (not Abalama).

Please do some research before making sweeping derogatory statements! Wikipedia, for all its faults, is a useful first place to look.

@AC

As it's already been pointed out, A _lot_ of IT/Computer innovations/inventions came from Europe. Yes, Windows came from the US, keep it, Linux came from Europe, I'd rather us it ;).

Anyway, The Register comes from Europe, so we'll use the European definition of cowboy thanks. I mean, it's not like you yanks can complain about a few misuses of your vocabulary, considering how much you've mangled ours!

missing Questions

Was Jerome Kerviel paid by a large bank to bring 'SocGen lost serious credibility as a result of the loss' into disrepute? Or will he be paid later, in a few years' time, as a reward/gesture of services rendered? Does he have a personal Swiss bank account or similar? Would a large bank do something like that, even? Pure speculation, though to wonder would be QuITe normal for an Inquiring mind, would it not?

@AC

So What?

See a fair few comments saying the guy shouldn't be allowed etc., but clearly the guy has the knowledge and the insight into the way not only these systems work, but how someone would attack them- Best guy for the job, i'd say.

Why are we surprised?

AFAIR, Jerome Kerviel used to work in IT for Societe Generale (you can put your own accents in here if you want to), where he worked on their compliance and control systems. When he became a trader he thus knew exactly how all the things worked that would alert to excess exposure and how to avoid / work round them.

Having screwed up big time in his new job, he's gone back to the old one.

Screwed up?

That has yet to be determined. I've heard people who know about these sorts of mechanisms opine that he was actually doing fine, but his superiors lacked the balls to back his position and took him out of the loop and liquidated the position he had held at a loss. Had they hung on another little while, his position would have returned *another* billion-magnitude profit, just like he was predicting.

And yeah, he worked in IT before and moved into trading. Since he can't trade he's returned to his old trade.

@ Mr "Everything good came from the US of A and don't you forget it"

A request

Can you direct your Yank-bashing more to the north? Many of us in Florida already get lumped in with the rednecks and old geezers--we're mostly sensible (aside from Jeb Bush,) and still think the Conch Republic was great idea, in general.

You may continue with the taunting in their general direction, please. :)

@trackSuit

Sir, you are sooo behind the times. Swiss, or even Liechtenstein, bank accounts are no longer secret !! Try the Cayman Islands or Curacao (ex-Dutch Antilles) !!

@Pyros - Weren't you guys supposed to be "Rebs", not "Yanks" ?? Not that I know much about that place except for the fact that Ol' "Hickory" Jackson fought off the Brits in the Battle of New Orleans and that the Congreve rockets were used for the first time in anger, which led to that line in your National Anthem about the "rockets' red glare" (Hollywood and Major Richard Sharpe notwithstanding) !! Or have I got that wrong ??

@Graham Wood - At the risk of being pedantic, Chris Colombo "discovered" Hispaniola !! It was Amerigo Vespucci who "discovered" America, hence that stupid name !! Who cares about a bunch of inconvenient natives running around that place !!

I wonder what would have happened if it was Pizzaro who "discovered" that place first ?? Would it now be called Pizzaria ?? And, God forbid, that is should be Ponce de Leon who was there first !! The innuendos will be endless !!